


The Vinci Incident

by Plenoptic



Series: The Indecent Reign of Maestro da Vinci [5]
Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Fluff and Smut, Happy!Niccolo, Hungry!Volpe, M/M, shameless cuddling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-01
Updated: 2015-03-01
Packaged: 2018-03-15 21:52:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3463349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Plenoptic/pseuds/Plenoptic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Machiavelli and Volpe enjoy some much-needed rest in Leonardo's hometown.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Vinci Incident

**Author's Note:**

> A departure from the usual tenor of these works, but it was cute and longish and it took place in Vinci so eh.

The little town of Vinci was quiet and boring. There was little to do, nothing of real interest to see, no one who could carry more than casual conversation. The market more hummed than roared, the people were by and large older, the food was warm and fattening, and the wine was mediocre at best.

It was, in short, everything Niccolò Machiavelli had hoped.

He'd been skeptical, at first, when Leonardo suggested that he and Volpe take a little vacation. The inventor's logic was sound; they'd recently managed a narrow victory against the Borgia, but they were all weary, nearing exhaustion. The final skirmish had left Niccolò convalescing from several painful injuries, and he'd spent the better part of the last month laid up in Claudia's bordello, diligently tended by Volpe. What they both needed was time away from Rome, time to heal and regain their strength. More than anything, Niccolò craved a little time to just be  _together_ , to sit on a bed that neither of them had occupied while sick or wounded, to talk about things that wouldn't determine whether they lived or died tomorrow.

So he had taken Leonardo's advice, and was infinitely glad he'd done so.

He cut a meandering path through the little marketplace, his bag bouncing on his hip, full of cheese and bread and a few large sticks of salami. He had made a point of picking up as much food as possible. He was dressed down, free of his heavy Signoria attire, his hair disheveled and his jaw unshaven. It felt good, better than he could have imagined, to just be one of the common folk again, to have nowhere to be and no one to impress. He even hummed as he walked, enjoying stretching his legs and the sensation of the sun beating down on the back of his neck.

There was no hint of Borgia influence here, nor Medici, nor Sforza, nor Pazzi nor Orsini nor Colonna. Vinci was too small and too simple to be of any interest to conquerors. No one knew of a Machiavelli here. No assassins or political rivals or bloodthirsty _condotierri_. Niccolò wasn’t even armed. God, how long had it been since he’d walked free of a sword’s weight on his hip? He couldn’t even remember.

No one knew him here. That thought brought an almost giddy smile to the young chancellor’s face. Anonymity meant freedom. No rumors. No reputation to uphold, no appearances to keep up. No need to hide or pretend he wasn’t madly, hopelessly in love.

Speaking of which… he scanned the heads of the crowd, though he knew it was futile. If Volpe didn’t want to be found, even Niccolò wouldn’t be able to spot him. Volpe was a thief by passion as well as profession, and had been delighted at the prospect of picking up a new array of shiny objects, a novel collection of nick-nacks and trinkets and little valuables. Like a damn rat, Niccolò thought to himself, amused. Or, more appropriately, a fox. So he walked, picking up food and enjoying the sunshine and the buzz of idle, meaningless conversation, while Volpe scampered about and explored unknowing pockets.

“ _Tesoro_.”

Niccolò turned on his heel and smiled. “Welcome back.”

“Thanks.” Volpe approached him with a breathless smile, took the younger man’s face in his hands and pressed a soundless kiss to his mouth. A few people jumped, startled, and hurried on their way, but the lovers paid them no heed. In a few days they would be off toward Rome again, and no one in Vinci would have even learned their names. “Look what I found.”

Niccolò raised an eyebrow, looking down at the curious stone Volpe pressed into his hand. “Huh. What is it?”

“I don’t know—some sort of religious icon, I thought.”

“It looks expensive. Valuable.” Niccolò shook his head and handed it back to the older man. “Go put it back, Gilberto.”

“What?” Volpe looked devastated. “But I found it for you.”

Niccolò had to smother a smile, keeping his face stern. Gilberto was so cute it was almost painful. “It’s probably a totem, love. You’re going to give some poor peasant a fright when they realize it’s gone. They’ll probably think it’s a bad omen.”

“But—”

“No buts.”

Volpe scowled. If he’d had a tail, Niccolò was sure it would be tucked between his legs. “Fine. Have you got any food?”

Niccolò rolled his eyes and opened his bag, let Volpe rifle through and stuff his pockets before sending him on his way. The thief took off, disappearing into the crowd, and with a shake of his head Niccolò continued his walk, munching on an apple.

He wandered to the edge of the market and stretched out in the shade of a lone tree when the sun became too hot—no doubt he’d be burned in the morning. He propped a book open in his lap but didn’t do much reading, too content to watch the clouds drift lazy paths across the sky, to listen to a few songbirds chirping merry conversations in the branches over his head. Niccolò dozed, lulled by the heat and the breeze ruffling his hair.

He awoke with a weight on his leg and glanced down. Volpe was asleep beside him, his head pillowed in Niccolò’s lap. Niccolò’s hand was tangled in the thief’s dark hair—he’d found the curls while he fidgeted in sleep and begun to stroke them out of habit. The young man smiled, trailing soft touches down the side of Volpe’s head, around the shell of his ear, across his nape and down his neck, over the broad curve of his shoulder… then back up again, pausing to brush his thumb over the soft warmth of Volpe’s lips. The thief didn’t so much as stir.

Once, even these small caresses would have been enough to bring him jolting back to consciousness. Volpe had spent most of his life in a state of hyper-awareness, constantly on the watch for threats. When they had first begun to share a bed, his lover’s every shift and movement had awoken him, his heart pounding in his throat for several panicked moments before he would realize it was only Niccolò. It had taken months before Volpe adjusted to sleeping with another warm body nearby. Now, however, Niccolò’s touch seemed to lull the thief into deeper dreams, soothed away the lurking anxieties that would see him stay wide awake.

Niccolò grinned. Once he had spent the better part of an hour playing lewdly with Volpe’s bare body while the thief slept. It had taken several long, hard licks to his cock—rigid, as was just a fact of the morning—to bring the older man gasping back to awareness while Niccolò laughed, pleased with his little game. And oh, Gilberto had taken him so hard as punishment…

He curtailed that line of thought, cooling the first curious flames of lust in his blood. There would be time enough for that when they returned to the inn tonight. Or earlier, if Volpe saw fit to return to the world of the waking any time soon. Niccolò yawned and stretched, flexing his toes.

“Mn.” Volpe grumbled and pressed his face against his lover’s thigh, face pulling into a grimace. “Stoppit…”

“Are you awake?” Niccolò smiled and threaded a hand into Volpe’s hair. “Hm?”

“No.” Volpe batted lazily at his hand. “ _Tesoro_ … ‘m hungry…”

Niccolò laughed, leaning down to nuzzle his face against his beloved’s soft curls. “You’re always hungry.”

“What’s your point…?”

The younger man chuckled and stretched out at a more comfortable angle, tugging Volpe’s shirt out of his hose and sliding the linen up and away from his body. He trailed his lips along the revealed expanse of the thief’s side, kissing his ribs, running his tongue along a raised scar that crossed his hip. He slid a hand down the front of Volpe’s shirt, relishing Volpe’s eager sigh when he teased a raised nipple.

“Not here,” the thief groaned, and raised a hand to trace the warmth of Niccolò’s inner thigh with his fingertips, so close to his face. Fingers closed around his nipple and tweaked it before resuming their soft rubbing. “Someone will see.”

Niccolò hummed against the delicious curve of Volpe’s waist. His back ached from the awkward bend, and his arm trembled with the effort of holding himself upright, but they had been denied this easy intimacy for too long. He wanted to spend all day here, exploring his lover’s body with lips and tongue and teeth.

“Niccolò, sit up.”

The young man did as he was asked with some reluctance, watching curiously while Volpe readjusted. The thief  came to rest on his stomach, stretched comfortably between Niccolò’s spread legs. Niccolò drew up his knees a little, bringing his thighs snug against either side of his beloved’s chest. Much to his delight, Volpe grinned up at him before beginning to undo the laces of his hose.

“Right here?”

“Right here.” Volpe pulled his lover’s warmth length free and grasped the young man’s narrow hips, hitching them forward. He ran his lips along the underside of Niccolò’s cock, rounding off his ministration with a slow, wet lick around the swollen tip. Niccolò tipped his head back and moaned, toes curling inside his boots when Volpe’s tongue swiped at his slit, those strong hands tightening on his hips.

Volpe lowered his head and sucked, enjoying the quiet, keening sounds of his beloved’s pleasure. He’d learned long ago that this was the best way to get his lover to relax; Niccolò loved a good romp on the bed as much as any man, but a mouth on his cock reduced him to a spineless puddle in seconds, robbed him of his worry and his willpower and left him almost purring. Volpe closed his eyes. He was going to make his _tesoro_ cum, right here beneath this tree, a wall away from all the spectators in Vinci, because Niccolò deserved it, damn it. They were on vacation, after all.

And cum Niccolò did, nearly fifteen minutes of torturously slow sucking later—no deep throating or choking, just gentle, persistent suction and a wet tongue and Volpe’s dark, sultry eyes looking up at him—with a cry that he quickly muffled behind his palm. Volpe swallowed his unspectacular ejaculation—they had, after all, gone three rounds last night, safe and playful in the privacy of their room at the inn—and licked him until he returned to softness.

“...Fuck.” Niccolò let his head loll back against the tree, fighting to steady his breathing. “Outside and everything.”

“Yep. Outside and everything.” Volpe took a few swallows of wine before kissing him, and the sharp, vulgar taste of alcohol and cum on his tongue made Niccolò’s insides shudder with want. Intimacy was normally something secretive, something they snatched in dark corners behind locked doors where no one could see. To be able to love like this, openly, stretched out under the sun with the grass tickling his flesh, was as close to heaven as Niccolò thought he would ever get.

Volpe tied up his hose again almost tenderly, stroking an affectionate fingertip along his lover’s crotch before kissing him again, cupping a hand to the back of his neck and tilting his head back, moaning around the hot tangle of their tongues.

“I love your mouth,” he mumbled, and kissed it once more to make his point, caressing Niccolò’s jaw, a little thrill running through him at the feel of stubble beneath his fingertips, heightening the sense that he’d loved his boy into a man, grown and brilliant and lovely. “Do you remember our first time?”

Niccolò chuckled, tipping his head back so Volpe could mouth hungry kisses against his neck. “Of course. I was—Christ. Eighteen? You climbed in through my window at night and had me while my parents slept two doors down.” He scratched behind Volpe’s ear, smiling at the way the thief purred and turned his head into the touch. “Did I ever tell you that my sister knew?”

“No! How?”

“The bed creaked something terrible. She used to tease me all the time.”

Volpe laughed. “All the better that we went to Venice, then.”

“Mm.” Niccolò’s smile warmed. He missed their days in the canal city. Those had been dangerous times, but also the sweetest, the start of their affair, the love between them passionate and curious and new. Niccolò had spent hours naked in Volpe’s bed, learning how to please his lover, exploring the older man’s body with cautious enthusiasm, discovering delicious new realities about sex that he’d somehow missed with the girls he used to love.

Good days. Happy days. Days spent talking and loving, laughing and fucking, learning about one another’s bodies and minds and hearts. And by the time they finally returned to Florence they were one and the same, a unit, a partnership. Niccolò’s parents both died without ever knowing, but his friends knew, and they took Volpe in as one of their own. Niccolò had passed many a pleasant evening with a glass of wine and his head on Gilberto’s shoulder while Biagio and Agostino and Totto drank and argued over games of baccarat. And while they weren’t looking Gilberto would hold him close, call him “beautiful boy” in a whisper against his mouth and kiss him. Sometimes Biagio would glance up and catch them, would laugh and tease them while Volpe grinned and Niccolò blushed and stammered.

Blessed. Niccolò wasn’t a God-fearing man, but he knew he was blessed.

“Want to head back to the inn?” Volpe asked. He’d been distracting himself with the food in the bag, letting Niccolò cogitate in peace, and he spoke around a mouthful of yellow cheese, didn’t bother to swallow it all before wolfing down some bread.

“Sure. But you are aware that’s our dinner, yes?”

Volpe swallowed and looked into the bag. “We may have to buy more.”

Niccolò heaved a long-suffering sigh. As satisfied as he was in mind and body and heart, the same couldn’t be said for his finances. Volpe was an expensive husband to keep around. “Alright. We’ll stop somewhere on the way.”

Volpe beamed and kissed him before getting to his feet. Niccolò gathered stowed his book in the bag and swung it over his shoulder, following his beloved at a leisurely pace while Volpe headed for the market with wide, brisk strides.

Florence’s second chancellor inhaled deeply, filled his lungs with crisp Tuscan air. The wind tugged on his hair, brushed it over his brow and around his ears. He’d need it cut soon, before they returned to Florence at least, if he was going to look even a bit presentable. Volpe had no such worries; his hood fell down around his shoulders, subjected his dark curls to the pull of the breeze. Niccolò admired him, struck by his beauty, by how lively and strong he looked in the fiery light of the setting sun.

“Hurry up, _Signor_ Machiavelli, I’m famished,” Volpe said, turning on his heel and tapping his toe impatiently.

Niccolò shook his head. “That’s not possible.” He drew level with Volpe and took the thief into his arms, surprising him with a tender kiss, but it was happily returned. He pulled back just enough that he could see Volpe’s eyes, dark, violet stars that turned warm and loving when their gazes met. “I love you.”

“And I you.” Volpe took the younger man’s face in his hands, touched their foreheads, smiled. “ _Tesoro_.”

Niccolò chuckled and took his hand, leading him toward the market, and bought his beloved a fourth meal while the sun set on quiet little Vinci.   


End file.
